"You're in luck. Sort of," Cardinal replied. "Everyone who's injured, get near to the window."

As everyone harmed gathered, Salvador took up Jeri and carried her to into the sunlight. Reaching his hand to the sun outside, he thought quietly, ... hope this works.

Suddenly, the light of the sun seemed to intensify, but the heat generated was not in proportion. It should have been unbearable, but instead, it was warm, relaxing. Breathing became easier. Aches grew calm. And, in general, you just felt good.

Cardinal breathed deep. "Hope that did the trick." He looked down to Jeri.

Jeri convulsed briefly in Cardinal's arms as she reached consciousness. The first thing she did was cough to clear her lungs of blood, which sprayed the palm of her hand as she recovered the ability to breathe normally. She looked up at him slowly, the curiosity in her eyes melting away as she realized what must have happened.

She pushed away from him, stepping down onto the floor. After surveying the room, she seemed to have assured herself that everyone was all right. She pressed a hand to her forehead briefly. "So they're all okay. But you're here." Her face clouded with confusion. "Who called you?"

Jeri blinked once. "What?" She shook her head. "Wait. I can find her." With that she pushed past the others and made a rush toward her desk. She yanked open a drawer. Shoving her hand inside, she closed it on something within and stepped back with a large amethyst crystal. "Just wait a moment. And don't tell her I've got one of these for her, will you?"

Sandy stood by tensely as Jeri worked. The madame laid both of her hands over what could only be the material focus for a divination spell. When she raised her eyes again, they were glazed and distant. "Six... one two. Wharf Avenue." She shook her head and cleared out of her trance. When she looked at Cardinal directly her face was tight with alarm. She inhaled sharply, apparenly not willing to share whatever it was she saw. "Go. I need to stay here. ...But go quickly."

"Hey, I know where that is," noted Hakaril. "It's...isn't it down by the gentlemen's club?" A strange look crossed the man's face as though he were briefly lost in some sudden thought. Perhaps it was a bit of deja vu, but the exchange seemed vaguely familiar. He shook his head quickly, pushing the vapors of condensing memory away before they had a chance to crystallize. "Yeah. Anyway, I have legs. I'm going."

The General brushed a bit of dust off his coat and resheathed his blade, pushing a wisp of azure hair out of his eyes and throwing a mischevious sideways glance at Cardinal. He knew that where they were going there was going to be trouble, and in this case, trouble was ultimately going to mean violence. Violent behavior in and of itself was neither good nor bad, though Hakaril tended to think that it took some sort of justification to propel most acts of violence out of the "sketchy" end of the moral spectrum and firmly into the gray area where he preferred that approximately fifty percent of all of his activities lie. It worked to the General's advantage that his rank and reputation tended to result in his activities being altered by a sort of bureaucratic magnet that shifted the compass of right and wrong gently in the direction of true north.

Politics and morality aside, there was no doubt in Hakaril's mind that it would be required that some skulls be split in order to save Shakti's life and preserve a future for prostitutes across the country. There was a definite nobility to that goal, somewhere, most likely in a more objective and enlightened society than even great cosmopolitan Doma, but it was a goal that was good enough for Hakaril regardless of anyone else's perspective.

Holding her stolen weapon behind her arm still, Shakti was careful to keep it out of the leader's sight. He reached out and grabbed the outer folds of her sari, leaving her in the midriff blouse she wore beneath as well as the ankle-length slip that kept her sari from being totally transparent.

Small concessions, she thought. Still got my clothes, and... Right on time, the leader pulled her in to kiss her again.

Shakti went limp very briefly, forcing him to support her weight. The distraction allowed her the moment she needed to bring the stiletto up and drive it through the side of his lower jaw. The blade pushed through the joint of his jawbone and pinned his tongue to the roof of his mouth. He staggered back, covering his mouth with his hands. Blood ran freely down the side of his neck, and he lunged at her again, realizing that she really was shaping up to be more of a problem than he'd previously assumed.

She sidestepped him and he tripped on the length of blue silk he'd ripped from her earlier and carelessly tossed onto the ground. He reached up and dragged her down, pulling her down to crack her head on the wall behind her. The first thing her eyes beheld was a blinding shower of light and pain, and when her vision cleared it didn't clear much. It returned just in time for her to see him looming over her once again. She lashed out with the stiletto, hoping to take another piece out of him before she lost consciousness. The razor carved into his side, sliding between his ribs and biting deeply into the man's lung.

He fell, blood running onto the floor from his chest and open mouth. Shakti wasn't far behind, as the impact of two head injuries was rapidly taking its toll. She fell to her knees next to him and reached into his belt. Luck was with her and his subordinates had turned over to him the keys they'd stolen from their rightful place in the guardhouse. She pulled them out, but couldn't sustain the effort necessary to remain conscious and unlock her restraints. She collapsed the rest of the way, joining her late companion on the floor of his chambers.

Without another word, Cardinal hustled out the door, followed by his cohort. Looking back at him as they headed to his sister's location, he couldn't help thinking, Huh. I never noticed, but he and I are actually somewhat similar. Blue hair, crimson garb, mage... odd. Maybe there are parallels between Gaera and Earth and he's...

They arrived on the scene quickly, coming upon the address without too much trouble. While attempting to make contact with his sister (he had to know if she were ALIVE before he started firing off mental messages left and right), he looked to Hakaril and said, "Window entry?"

"Breaking and entering isn't exactly my specialty, but I think it'd be a little bit too conspicuous if we just waltz in through the front door," noted Hakaril in agreement.

The General paused briefly, furrowing his brow as though deep in thought, and then nodded resolutely. "Okay. I've definitely got the energy I need to handle whatever the hell we have to deal with in here. Probably just another bunch of punks that are going to wish they had never seen my face. Still, I'm guessing that there'll be enough of them here that we should stick together." He gestured to a window at the side of the building conveniently located above a group of stacked crates. "We can climb up there and presumably find a way to drop down."

With a dramatic enough entrance, Hakaril mused, we might even startle them so much that they aren't able to put up much resistance.

"What? Locked?" Hakaril shrugged, waving his hands around a little bit before gesturing half-assedly at the locked window. "And you want to pry it open? How inelegant." The mage's sentence was punctuated by a soft click as the window's locking mechanism spontaneously disengaged, throwing the latch open from the inside without any harm to the window itself. "Try it again. I think you'll find that you get a great deal more cooperation this time." Having done his best to assist Cardinal in their bit of rescue-oriented burglary, Hakaril climbed up the boxes behind him and edged the other man aside so that he could peer down into the room below.

Sure enough, a sentry was posted beneath the window, and it was easily a fifteen-foot drop from the window to the floor. It might be possible to land without spraining an ankle, but it would take caution that would be difficult to manage with a lookout staring up at him while he hung from the inside of the window in an attempt to minimize his drop distance. Hakaril peered down to inspect the sentry.

"Excellent," whispered the General to Cardinal. "He isn't wearing a helmet."

Hakaril muttered softly until a whitish light began to coalesce in his hands and reshape itself until it resembled a heavy mace. He leaned in through the window, holding the weapon by the handle, and closed one eye as he carefully dangled it in the air. When he was certain that he had found the right spot, he released his firm grip on the mace. A combination of large mass and the rapid acceration of gravity handled the rest.

The General winced slightly at the sudden noise. "Well, I assure you that he's never going to suffer from headaches again," he noted with a shrug. "That was definitely his last one. After you?"

During Cardinal's vision, there was a single flash of an image mixed in with the confusion that usually resided there. It was... a face... his hands, together, holding nothing... and blood. It was... odd, and too quick to warrant much notice, but... now... that image nagged at him, his feet to the wall, knees bent, hand on the rough brick for that ever-important two seconds of balance... Who knew if it'd be real?

He pushed off, landing a few feet away from the new corpse. As his souls touched the floor, they found traction, and he set into a run, sword drawn. He searched with his eyes, for he knew sound would only draw attention and be fruitless, if she was unconscious as he thought.

Cardinal turned a corner, and there, staring at him, was another thug, having a cigarette. The flaming stick was flung from his fingers, and the thug jumped him, disarming the mage completely by accident. The two struggled, Cardinal pinning the man to the ground.

"Stop it! Stop now!" warned Cardinal, his hands at his opponent's throat. Steel-eyed hate was his only answer, and in a quick motion, a flash of steel could be seen in his hand.

The Nova spell fired.

Cardinal got up quickly. There wasn't as much blood as he thought. The head just lay there, rolling to the side, his eyes staring at the cigarette he'd just finished. Cardinal backed away for a second, and then, continued on.

Cardinal is clearly going to get himself killed, Hakaril muttered inside his own head as he evaluated the current situation. The mage had sprinted down the hallway waving his sword around before Hakaril had even managed to reach the floor of the warehouse. The absurdity of this situation was tempered by the fact that Hakaril knew that Cardinal's primary aim was to rescue Shakti no matter the cost, but at this point it seemed as though Cardinal had largely abandoned the stealth approach in favor of the madman approach. While Hakaril had often found in his experience that sometimes doing something completely stupid would catch the enemy off-guard and ultimately be successful, a fair number of adventurers attempting this particular angle never managed to tell anyone about how great the plan worked.

Opting to follow after his potentially insane companion, Hakaril broke into a run to catch up to Cardinal the moment his feet hit the floor. Depending on how I choose to look at this situation, this is either brilliance or suicide, noted the archmage as his boots pounded against the solid stone. He knew that the line between the two was often much thinner than anticipated.

As Cardinal continued trying to make a connection with his sister, he found that he was mostly unsuccessful. Every now and again he'd catch her for just a moment. Over the sound of his feet hitting the floor he heard a laugh, a woman's laugh. One of those purely feminine noises of surprise and delight. It was a sound he hadn't heard from her in a long time. She was ahead another couple of rooms and around a corner.

He lost her, and passed two more doors, reaching the corner. He connected one more time, and this time the distraction was visual. He saw a boy sitting on the grass, with dark eyes and black hair curling around his ears. He was in his late teens at best, and looked like he could have been one of Cardinal's inlaws. He laughed and clapped his hands, but Cardinal could neither hear him nor get a glimpse of whatever the boy was laughing at, who else might be there.

As Cardinal attempted to connect with his sister one more time, he got close, and as he tried again, he got even closer. As he turned the corner, it became clear that though he was closing the distance between them spacially, the distance that really counted was only growing wider with each passing second. Cardinal knew where Shakti was, and it only took another few steps for him to reach the room where she'd been taken. From Shakti there were no messages, no more images. No explanations or indications that she was still there at all.

There was no sound from behind the door. It could have been an empty room, except that Cardinal knew otherwise and had been led here because his sister was in there.

The door wasn't locked, just blocked by something inside. Never a good sign.

Pushing that aside, the first thing Cardinal and Hakaril saw upon entering was the color blue. Six full meters of blue silk were wound around on the bare wooden floor. Shakti's sari. Not always a bad sign, but probably this time it was. Under the blue was red. Blood had poured out over the floor, soaking up into the fabric like oil into a candle wick.

Close to the door, and probably the reason the door was hard to open, was a man on the floor with his eyes open and blood pouring from his mouth. He wasn't alive, and it was obvious. Only the dead stared like that.

Lying along the far wall, the wall behind the door, was Shakti. She was still wearing most of her clothing, just not the long winding mass of silk currently coiled on the floor. It was evident that some of the blood in here was hers, because her neck and shoulders had been covered in it and her hair was soaked in blood.

She'd apparently defeated her enemy, but at a heavy cost. Blood everywhere. Her color was wrong, and she was breathing way too fast. Instead of the usual leather bracers she wore as armor, she had a metal pair, still securely fixed on each wrist. They were the bracers the Doman guard had placed on her to suppress her magic. She had never gotten them off, though the keys were resting in her open palm.

Taking hold of the keys in her hand, Card unlocked her shackles, and threw it to the side. Picking her up gently, he carried his sister to the barred window, and summoned the sun to his side to heal his sibling.

As she was straining against the borders of death, the landscapes she passed were wrenchingly familiar. She knew this place. She'd walked here with her brother, with friends long dead. Everything was just as it was the day she'd left it. Here, she'd thrown this flower into the river. And here, this stick had broken when she'd stepped on it walking with Matteo. They always walked along the river. She continued, walking along the path they'd taken, turning the corner where--

"Speranza. Long time, no see."

Her hands flew up to cover her mouth in total disbelief. A brief laugh escaped her and she took a step closer. She hadn't seen this boy since they'd been separated by the Inquisition's agents. Time and pain had taken their toll on her, but Matteo... he was just as she remembered, sitting cross-legged in the grass by the water.

"My Matteo... You can't really be here," she said.

The boy threw back his head and laughed. "Sure I can." He leaned forward, looking up at her. "But you can't."

She wanted to say something, tell him she wanted to stay. Stay because she was so tired, always been so tired, and she just wanted to sit and have quiet and hear his voice again, but the words wouldn't come. She was being pulled away. The scenery blurred into shapeless vibrant colors and the sound of the river rose until she couldn't hear anything but water.

Then... Sal's voice. He wanted her to come back, didn't he? Whatever she wanted, he needed her here. It seemed she was always to be dragged to the edge of death and brought back because Sal needed her to live.

"Esperanza!"

Consciousness. Lingering pain. She looked up at Cardinal. "You're..." she tensed and closed her eyes as the dizziness distracted her. "Not really the brother I was expecting to see." She relaxed and leaned back, trying to regain her equilibrium. If she had to remain here, at least she could keep control. "But..." She smiled weakly. "I guess you'll do."

Hakaril stepped quietly into the room after Cardinal and grimly surveyed the scene. This was little more than an improvised cell. Something had gone horribly wrong here, but the question of "for whom" was initially unclear. Shakti, as far as he could tell, was alive. Her presumed assailant...was not. A scarce victory, thought Hakaril, but a victory nevertheless. He only hoped that Cardinal could patch up her wounds so that she could walk and fight on her own. Dragging an unconscious woman out of the warehouse was going to be difficult.

He shut the door behind himself and stood with his back pressed against it, idly shoving the corpse of the thug who had been so hot to get a piece of Shakti out of his way. From the look of things, Hakaril assumed that he had gotten relatively little that he really wanted. "Remind me to never attempt to force myself on your sister, Cardinal," quipped the mage with a dark smirk. "Judging from this fellow's wounds, I think he had to deal with...unwanted penetration."

"I cannot believe you just said that," Cardinal remarked, deadpan. Switching to sarcasm, he said, "Anyways, unless you feel like taking on twenty plus armed guards, I suggest we find a quick way out of here."

Then it dawned on him.

These people had kidnapped and beaten his sister.

His boss hadn't received a sufficient challenge for his martial and magical skills.

He was the only one who DIDN'T want to take on twenty plus armed guards.

If Shakti smiled at Hakaril's comment, she laughed at her brother. Hakaril's comment brought her to reality somewhat and she shoved away from Cardinal, gripping the bars of the nearby window for support as she hopped down to the floor.

Don't need to be hanging onto him, not right now. Only encourages him.

She wrapped an arm around the bars and stretched her hand through the bars. The sun was setting and the red light spread over the skin of her hand and down her inner arm as the sun slipped beneath the tops of nearby buildings. Pulling from the sun the last of the healing energy it would provide for the day, she pulled her arm back and turned to face her brother and Hakaril.

"So," she said. "The virtuous warrior comes to save the helpless lady from her sinister captors and he brings with him the brave and loyal General..." she gave Hakaril a low, formal bow. "...of the monkeys." She laughed and saluted him. "Though I did always like the monkey." She laughed yet again.

Shakti extended a hand over the blood-soaked sari. Two tiny pieces of metal rose up in the air and she wiped the blood off them and her eyes travelled along the length of her fallen sari. "Okay. You know what?" she muttered to herself. "I don't care if it's covered in blood. It's mine and I'm not leaving it."

Shakti put the straight pins in her mouth and picked up the length of fabric in the middle, pulling it up out of the blood on the floor. Running her hands down its length, she found what was apparently the correct corner on the correct end. She tucked it into the waist of her skirt and wrapped it around herself, tossing the stray end over her shoulder to keep it out of the way. This whole process was at once both surprisingly elaborate, and a little grotesque considering that both she and her sari were covered in blood from multiple sources. Taking up a length of fabric in front of her, she wiped the blood off of her fingers and began pleating and folding and wrapping and folding and tucking fabric away until she finally had herself together to her satisfaction.

She ran a hand through her hair. Despite the shortcomings of her appearance right now, she found that she was pretty damned comfortable with it.

Nothing wrong with taking a day to be the blood-soaked goddess of destruction, she thought.

"Well, boys. It's time for me to live up to my name. I'm leaving, but I'm not sneaking out with you."

Hakaril blinked. The reference to the monkey had clearly been lost on him. He was entirely uncertain as to whether Shakti's comment was intended to be a compliment or an insult. Whatever the case may have been, Hakaril had just observed the most bizarre and elaborate dressing ritual that one could undertake in the middle of an enemy outpost. "This is an interesting thing you have decided to do," noted the General as he observed Shakti's sari-wearing process. "Seriously. You go to great lengths to wrap yourself in blood-soaked cloth in the place where you almost died. I don't know whether to be impressed at your meticulous attention to detail or horrified at your apparent fixation on your own attempts at maintaining a fashionable appearance."

Shaking his head, the mage glanced back and forth between the two siblings. "I follow you on the not sneaking out bit. I suppose we owe these bastards a little something for giving you so much trouble, hm? And perhaps to suit Cardinal's sense of justice it might be best that we make the city safe for tomorrow's whores by cutting down every last man who would dare offend or assault the women of Jeri's house. That's not really a plan I can object to, personally."

"Your brother has spent a great deal of time studying the legal system of this country, Shakti," commented Hakaril with a dismissive wave of his hand. "That being the case, I presume he knows that the country does not frown on what it calls 'justified vigilantes.' We as a government acknowledge that we simply cannot handle all of the problems that are bound to arise as a result of petty disputes and criminal activity. And while I tend to stay uninvolved in things like simple murders or petty vandalism, I do occasionally take a great deal of pleasure in being judge, jury, and executioner for those who have run afoul of...well, not the law...but my friends." The General grinned cooly at Shakti, surveying her crimson-spattered figure from top to bottom.

"Normally, I'd clean you off," he remarked with a smirk, "but I have a feeling that in a minute you're going to be completely covered in blood again, so there doesn't seem to be much of a point to it. Just make sure it's someone else's blood this time, alright?"

Cardinal happily sighed. "Well, I expected as much. I mean, you two aren't exactly the 'live and let live' type. Or even the 'live and let the guard come back and arrest the lot of them' type."

He placed his hand on his sister's shoulder, and gave a smirk. "You were all I was here for, really. Taking out this syndicate, helping Cassandra, saving Jeri's girls... everything else is collateral damage to me. Gravy."

The smirk turned into a slightly sadistic grin, and Cardinal unsheathed his blade, resting it on his shoulder. "However, given the circumstances, the legal justification, AND the enthusiasm I'm feeding off of from the both of you... I would like to make a LOT of gravy.

She turned to her brother and shrugged. "I may be all you were here for, but I sure as hell wasn't here for myself. I still have business here." She reached down and pulled her stolen knife from under the corpse of her one-time assailant. The stiletto was still covered in blood, but at this point cleaning it off would deviate from her general theme for the evening.

She walked out the door, allowing Hakaril and Cardinal to follow as they wished. "If they're still in the main room, then they're exactly where I left them."

Since we're going to kill them all anyway....

She stopped with her hand on the doorknob, ready to head into the other room. "I don't want to get either of you killed or anything, but anyone mind if I take the direct approach and head in first? I feel like amusing myself a bit."

She clicked her tongue at Cardinal in disapproval, but didn't bother suppressing a smile. "Such things you say, Salvador." Her smile became a vicious grin. "One might almost think you expect me to enjoy this."

She waved a hand in front of her face, creating a telekinetic barrier over her skin. Silk was pretty, but didn't lend much protection in a fight. That done, she stretched her hand out in front of her and the door in front of her splintered and flew into the room beyond. With a delighted chuckle she followed the debris inside. She knew what kind of men they were. She knew the lives they led, and the pain they'd caused people she cared about. She knew what Sandy had gone through within these walls, and what's more, Shakti had come very close to replacing her.

Everyone had to die, no matter what happened to her. If it killed her, these men would die. Fortunately, Shakti was conscious of the fact that this time was different. This time she had backup, and she doubted very much that Hakaril and her brother would allow her to make such a sacrifice. She'd had few opportunities to work in teams, and while she would never ask for it, she wasn't so caught up in her own pride that she was above accepting help.

The room went silent. Whatever amusement the thugs might have felt at seeing her bloodied form was dispelled by her next action. She threw her head back and laughed, and as her voice echoed off the walls, every window in the warehouse broke, raining glass down on the men inside. The sound of her laughter and shattering glass brought them to reality.

To their credit, the men didn't attempt to attack her one by one as she'd half-expected. Instead, several rushed Shakti as a team. As they ran forward, she took the precious second before they got to her to look over their weapons. Swords, knives, and ...oh, joy. An old-fashioned boy with a pair of throwing hatchets. At least one of them had some personality in his weapon choice. Part of her was idly curious as to where he'd picked them up.

No time. Let them come.

The first one to reach her slammed her to the wall next to the door with a forearm against her throat. "Hey, sweetheart." He looked down. "That your blood?"

"Some of it, yeah," she replied.

The man pulled a hunting knife from his belt as he held her, but his hand never got further than that. Shakti pulled a hatchet from the other man's belt and pulled it hard into her assailant's skull. He fell, and she held his hatchet in one hand, her stolen stiletto in the other. The others pulled back very briefly in confusion as to what had just happened.

"Come and get me, boys," she whispered teasingly, and they rushed her again. She dropped the stiletto and pulled the other hatchet from its home on her enemy's belt. She cast a spell again, and held it.

She held it until they got closer, she held it until she see the whites of their eyes, could feel their breath, she held it until they grabbed her.

Shakti released her Orion strike in the midst of them, blasting them back away from her, clearing a space once more. Two of the men didn't get up from the floor.

One of the others was up in an instant. Oh, some training on that one. That's just lovely. He has to make my life harder by not letting me kill him. He WOULD.

He pulled a knife from the back of his belt, one that Shakti hadn't seen. Forgetting for a moment that she didn't have her normal leather bracers for protection, she brought her right arm up in front of her face to shield herself. The blade bit deeply into her skin. Wrenching herself away from him, she wiped the gash on her clothes. It started bleeding again immediately. "No time to fix it," she muttered.

He came again, but this time she was ready. She couldn't hold a weapon in that arm, but she didn't need to. She lifted one of his own hatchets in front of his eyes.

The lovely thing about topheavy weapons like hatchets... she thought. Is that they feel a hell of a lot like a kukri when you throw them! She laughed. Throwing them was similar. Similar enough.

Shakti lowered her hand, and the hatchet floated for a moment in the air. "Blade of the destroyer," she chanted. "Tear through my enemies. Avenge and destroy." She heaved it at him with her mind, "Hand of Kali!" ...and listened to the keenly gratifying noise of metal splintering the bones in his face.

This day had started terribly. It looked like it was going to improve significantly before the evening was out.

Hakaril observed with a smug grin the enthusiasm with which Shakti flung herself into combat. He had a certain fondness for people who appreciated a good fight. The crude, raging bloodlusts of thugs like these were beneath him, or so he would like to think, but a battle was almost as much an intellectual exercise as a physical one. Rapid calculations and judgments made during combat were a product of honed instincts and tactical expertise, and Hakaril considered himself to be highly competent in both areas. While a brawl against a dozen men was different from an intense magical duel, both types of combat had their perks.

Shakti's idea to cast a protective spell to reinforce her tattered clothing was an excellent plan, but Hakaril felt that his version of a similar spell would be infinitely more impressive if he cast it while the enemy was watching.

Hakaril's hands and fingers fluidly played through the air as he combed the invisible mana flow surrounding his body. A sharp and palpable current of energy emanated from his body as a set of glowing threads of multicolored light began to coalesce around him, the now-visible strands of force wrapping his body in a protective field. As the iridescent web rapidly solidified around his figure, the mage concluded his spell with the final words of a powerful invocation.

"My will is my weapon and my soul is my shield! ASTRAL ARMOR!"

A shockwave rippled forth from Hakaril's aura as his newly formed protective field settled into place. His former black garb was now covered by a semi-transparent suit of polychromatic plate mail surrounded in a swirling cloud of lustrous powder like the sheddings of a moth. The mage grinned.

"I need nothing other than my own desire to kill you punks!" shouted the mage as a group of four men advanced on him with flashing blades. "Come and get me!"

The first of the men to charge beat his companions to the point by a few seconds, giving him time to swing an enormous two-handed sword at the General with more than sufficient strength to cleave a man in two. Hakaril made no attempt to parry the strike.

A split second later, the thug was tightly gripping a hilt attached to slightly less than half of his former weapon. The other charging foes stopped dead in their tracks. Physics had seen fit to deposit the broken blade of the sword on the floor a few feet away from Hakaril, where it clattered and skidded to a halt. To the complete surprise of his attacker, Hakaril's shimmering armor had not only completely stopped the attack, but the effect was comparable to striking a solid stone wall.

"That was a nice sword," commented the General with a smirk. "Of Baronian make, I'd guess. A highlander's claymore. On the plus side, you can use it with one hand now if you really want." The man assaulting the mage took a step backwards and stared at his now-useless weapon with an expression of utter disbelief. His three companions all wore similarly dumbfounded faces.

"Now...die!" spat Hakaril as he raised a hand toward the face of the disarmed brute. Panicking, the man brought his sword arm and the broken hilt up to the level of his eyes, as though attempting to shield himself from his impending death. Hakaril snapped his fingers, and the man's three comrades suddenly exploded in a blindingly colorful pyrotechnic shower, bits of astral shrapnel scattering in all directions. Each of the three men quickly became more acquainted with the warehouse floor.

The leader of the pack fell to his knees, muscles shaking violently as he dropped the remains of his weapon. His will had been broken. Once, he was a strong man, or so he had thought. His victims always begged for mercy before he killed them, usually after he had forcefully taken whatever he had wanted. He had "conquered" many unsuspecting maidens. He had recieved many spontaneous "donations" straight from the coin purses of many back alley travellers. He had been a man endowed with great virility and the associated might to take whatever he pleased. His "triumphs" had always left him feeling superhuman, and now he was in a position typical of one of his victims.

"You're all alike," admonished Hakaril. "You have so much confidence, so much belief in your own might. You think you're entitled to whatever you want because you can take it from whoever you want. But you're wrong!" The mage was shouting now, his voice battering the ears of his enemy like a mallet against a drum. "You are nothing but a common murderer who preys on the weak and defenseless! You are not strong, you are exploitative! You are a bully and a coward! You are begging me for your life, and so I shall let you have it. But from now on, you will live in a manner much more suitable to your temperment."

The thug's eyes widened as Hakaril's aura pulsed with energies that even his magic-dead body could feel resonating through the air. A brilliant blue glow surrounded the thug. He shivered as a sudden coldness came over his body. Every pore on his body forced his hair to stand at attention as an unbearable itchiness overwhelmed his sense of touch. The man writhed on the floor as grey fur began to erupt from every inch on his body. The world around him, especially the General's glaring eyes, grew smaller as they drew farther away from his rapidly shrinking form. His face began to elongate abruptly, coming to a very narrow point as long, white whiskers burst from his stretching cheeks.

Soon, the transformation was complete. The thug had become a rat.

"Now your form suits your personality," Hakaril stated, voice dripping with contempt. "But you should still have your mind. Go crawl into a filthy tunnel somewhere and scavenge for scraps. You've been doing it all your life. It should be a familiar activity."

As Cardinal took a sideways glance at his two companions, he couldn't help but think they were both a little... how to put it...

Criminally insane.

But, they were his criminals today. And if these men were the law, every law should be broken.

As he approached his outlaws, they began to run at him. But, he raised his hand and shouted, "Hold it!" They continued to charge, and he grumbled, saying, "But I just want to tell you..."

The first henchman swung a cudgel at his face, which Cardinal bent over backwards to avoid. He stood straight again, only to dodge left and right to avoid another bandit's wild sword swings. A third's axe came smashing to the ground, and stuck there, Cardinal standing on the side.

"You fellows really want to hear this. Really. But, if you want to be like this..." The axewielder's nose provided a springboard for the mage as he did a backflip, landing in front of two of the ruffians, whose necks quickly exploded with blood, slashed solidly by Cardinal's blade.

"Oh, come on, guys. Just let me ge-" He couldn't even finish that sentence as twin swords came at his neck. He ducked, swiping at the shylock on his right, and rolling that way to avoid his partner on the left. Cardinal ran at him, their blades connecting once, twice, thrice, till hilts locked.

"And now I'm annoyed. I'll tell you at the end."

Cardinal shoved his enemy's blade away, and brought his own across another neck on the backslash. As his opponent staggered away, clutching at his throat, two more foes came at his back, foolishly screaming to announce themselves. Sal turned to his side, the twin mugs swinging on either side of him, and for a second, there was a Spaniard sandwich, on scofflaw bread. Quickly, he shoved one slice away, and then tucked his rapier under his arm, killing the enemy behind him.

"And by the way, you sound like this. URRRRRRRRRGH!" Cardinal made a contorted face, running at the hoodlum, who, oddly enough, was thrown off by it, and slain easily.

"Oh? That works? Who kn-" Cardinal cut himself off, guarding himself against an attack from behind from a rather large fellow.

"Well. This one will be interesting." With a quick motion, he pushed the brute's warhammer away, if only for a second, and rolled away, allowing himself to face his foe. He almost ran at the fellow, but then he found himself guarding his back against another brute's attack, and this one was as big or bigger than his compatriate.

"... OK. I can work this." He shoved that cutthroat's weapon away, ran at his buddy, vaulted off his chest, and knocked down the second brigand, using the surprise to drive his rapier through his heart.

The first brute, dazed, began to get up, but then Cardinal stood over him, sword at his throat. "What," the weary mage said, "I was TRYING... to tell you... was that I was going to fight... WITHOUT... magic. But do YOU let me talk? No. I can't even have my little dramatic moment at the beginning of the fight. And now, I don't even care. I'm going to go help my sister."

That was the last thing the thug ever heard. A Nova spell charging in Cardinal's hand was the last thing he ever saw.

As Shakti flung her new hatchet at her enemies with the power of her mind, she found herself looking past them to her allies.

Shakti herself felt strangely liberated, unable to speak at length to anyone without her voice ascending into peals of delighted laughter. She couldn't even taunt her enemies past the wide grin on her face. She noted a significant contrast in her comrades.

Shakti watched Silvar out of the corner of her eye, noting his behavior, his words, his aggression. She'd always assumed the General was no fool,and could be trusted to take care of himself. However, she hadn't ever fought at his side, truly fought. They'd been in combat together only once, but they were fighting a creature that was largely mindless. There had been no emotional investment for either of them. In short... she'd learned nothing.

His demeanor was utterly different now. The way he destroyed the weapons of his enemies, the volume of Silvar's voice as he railed at them, the way he held a grown man at his mercy, and the sick humor in the justice the General imposed on that man.... he was truly angry, and this Shakti had not anticipated.

It was just as well that Shakti had long ago decided that deciphering Silvar was beyond her ability. Otherwise, his behavior now would be the source of some truly agonizing curiosity.

Shakti had trained with her brother, but she'd never seen him in a serious battle before. He'd always been the one to stay her hand, to value the lives of his enemies at least in principle. It was difficult for her to avoid being distracted by the reactions of her friends. It was her job to observe people and, after all, what is more tempting to a scholar like Shakti than a chance to see people she thought she knew in a totally different light?

Her brother... well, to start with he was spending a great deal of time shouting at his enemies, but with a drastically different tone than Silvar. It seemed more for his own amusement than anything else, but at least he was managing to do it without getting himself killed.

The one place Shakti felt she never had any reason to worry about her brother was on the battlefield. She'd trained with him, after all. Her only concern was his tendency to, well...frankly...care about other human beings, a problematic impulse that Sal seemed to be resolving satisfactorily. For now.

In fact, it was a little surreal watching him kill with no more hesitation than Shakti herself felt. Hard to pin down exactly what Shakti had expected from him, but she had always been the vicious one, the angry one, the one most ready for violence at any time. She couldn't help but be a little proud of her brother, even as the sight of blood on his hands wiped away many notions of the man's moral purity, his innocence.

No matter. He could handle himself, and true to form he was coming her way. She waved with one hand covered in blood. Whoops. Her injured arm was still bleeding. That was annoying. She'd promised Silvar and everything.

With a flick of her fingers, she twirled her new pet hatchet through the air, and her aura began to shift. Silvar had seen her doublecasting before, and the effect was similar. Her aura stretched away from her body, forming another perfect pair of arms below her own that helped her cast the spell.

Shakti stretched her hands out in front of her, both flesh and phantom palms facing upward as she raised the second hatchet to join its mate in the air. This was the tough part, concentrating on two weapons. She could do it, but unfortunately her short period of academic amusement had come to an end. There were still men to kill, and Shakti considered each and every one her prey.

When his sister was like this, Cardinal knew that widespread violence was her goal. A swath of destruction, as it were. So, when he put his blade through the back of one of his sister's attackers, he knew she wouldn't mind. As long as they all met their end, it didn't matter how or who.

Though, by Cardinal's track, he had taken down the most.

Quickly rolling under a flying axe, he took up residence behind his sibling. "Greetings, Miss Messiah," he said, a bit amused with himself. "Having fun, I trust? The evening's amusement sufficient for you?"

Shakti's response was initially nothing more than once of those wide, half-crazed grins she'd been tossing around for the past minute or so. "Our plans are certainly turning out to be better than theirs." Distracted by the short bit of conversation, she stepped to one side, almost but not perfectly evading the blade of a sword coming her way. Diving back into the fray away from her brother, Shakti held a hand to her side just under her arm.

"Dammit. You son of a bitch. That fucking hurts." It hurt, but it was probably just a gash in her skin, nothing too important cut open. It was bleeding pretty nicely, but she was casting enough magic that she knew she couldn't waste energy healing herself. Not like another scar on her body was the end of the world. Her best option at this point was to hold on until after the fight, hopefully laying into her enemies hard enough that they'd die in time for her to do something about her own injuries.

Soon the warmth of the blood running down her side faded into the generalized exhileration that had been fueling Shakti for this long. It was a damned good thing she had that, otherwise she might have begun to worry about her magical reserves. Soon she wouldn't have anything left, and even healing herself would be a gamble.

Shakti disappeared into the crowd of men who were by this point fighting not for wealth, power, or dominance, but for their own survival. For a while the only sign that Shakti was still holding her own away from her friends was the occasional riff of laughter cascading over the grunts of anger and pain from the criminals. It wasn't until the mages had slaughtered most of the criminals and the crowd had thinned somewhat they could even see her. When only a scattering of criminals were left, Shakti exhausted her magical reserves. A sensible person would have switched to a melee weapon or even allowed her allies to finish the remaining enemies.

It was plain by the unwavering savagery in her grin that Shakti was far from sensible. She had decided these men would die, and until that decision came to its natural conclusion she would tear through them like a madwoman. She found the limits of her magical endurance, ignored them, and passed them.

With each spell the wounds on her side and forearm deepened, bled a little more. No matter. Her blood, their blood, it was all the same. Just blood on a battlefield, and there was nothing wrong with that. As she pushed herself harder and harder, even the injuries her brother had healed earlier began to reopen. Just blood. Just dizziness. Nothing important.

It wasn't until the last man had fallen she let herself lean against a wall for support. She laughed again, covering her eyes and tilting her head back. Nothing mattered, not her own injuries or the presence of her allies. Her enemies had been her focus, her enemies were dead, and now the bloodlust spread out into a more benign wash of relief. What could she do but laugh?

Someone had gotten in a parting swipe on Cardinal's leg. That irked him, but thankfully, it had been a last attack from a dying foe, whose end came quicker from an angered boot. He now came equipped with a small limp, which he endured to his trip to his sister.

He leaned with her on the wall, letting it support his weight. He stared over at his sister, and smirked with her, even cracking a small chuckle, and let her finish her mirth.

When it appeared she was done, he put his hand on her shoulder. "Es... I have abandoned all illusions of you retaining anything but madness in that mind of yours. But if any court is going to hear your case, you'll need to at least APPEAR coherent.

"Oh, and I'm going to need to sleep for a week after this. Saving you is VERY taxing."

Hakaril cracked his neck noisily and surveyed the carnage. "Well, damn. I think we've officially solved one problem. Justice has been served, eh, Cardinal? Guilty verdict and punishments delivered all at once to a crowd of criminals. Makes you feel pretty good about yourself, doesn't it?" He smirked a bit, cracking a few more joints to punctuate his sentence. "Man, that was exhausting. I used a lot more energy than I would normally have just so that I could create sufficient dramatic effect. Such is life."

"Actually, I don't think YOU should. SOMEONE'S gotta explain this mess to the Guard once they show up, and who better than the King's go-to man?"

Cardinal grinned a grin. "And I bet you'd be angrier if I didn't have a very good point. C'mon, sister. Let's go," he chuckled, gathering up an enemy axe as a makeshift cane. "If you're very, very good, I'll even let you ride piggyback, but JUST THIS ONCE."

Shakti stared at her brother like there were butterflies and lollipops swarming out of his ears. "Oh, would you? That's a kind offer, but you know my answer." She shook her head. "May as well ask me to tongue-kiss our Hakaril. No offense," she said with a nod to the General. "You're a good guy, one of my favorites, but..." she shoved off of the wall and walked to the opposite door alone. She turned with a mischievous grin. "It would never have worked between us. I'm sorry." She laughed and held the door open, waiting for the others to follow.

"I'm headed to the Villa Pascha, even if we leave immediately afterward to put me back in my cell."

"Whatever the case may be, I'm not going to be the one to do that. And whatever you seem to think," Hakaril added, "I'm nobody's 'go-to man.'" He shrugged and produced a pen and parchment from inside his coat and held the scroll up against the wall so as to get a steady writing surface. "As far as the mess, I'll mention it to someone when I get back to the castle. I intend to leave a note explaining the circumstances. Don't worry, whoever reads it will be certain that it's genuine." The mage was frantically scribbling on the parchment; closer investigation revealed that his scribbles were actually forming words, albeit in extraordinarily messy handwriting. Hakaril's penmanship had never been terribly good, and it had cost him a few times during his tenure at Gunnir, particularly in circumstances where misdrawing runes or failing to properly cross one's T's resulted in an arcane backfire. One of his written exams had accidentally become the catalyst for a spell that polymorphed his writing desk into a walrus when the mage improperly formed the letter "a" in the word "radish." He had since learned the value of not using magical-grade parchment for hasty notes.

After finishing his notice, Hakaril snapped his fingers and made a motion like he was shoving a thumbtack into the parchment to hold it in place on a corkboard. Despite there being no physical thumbtack and the wall being made of stone, the parchment stayed in place. With a great sweeping flourish, he inscribed a very large version of his personal rune on the wall below the paper.

You promised yourself you wouldn't try to figure the man out, Shakti, she thought.

But come on! she answered herself. Professional obligation. I totally have that. After all, I am supposed to be studying these people. My brother's too busy getting his little childbride knocked up to poke around in the General's brain and clearly someone should. So there. I'm going to ask.

The mental debate with herself lasted only a second or two, and when she was done she put a hand on her hip and looked at Hakaril. "I have to ask. How exactly do you explain a way a pile of dead people stashed in a warehouse? Just scribble down, 'Hey this is General Silvar, we killed a bunch of people but there's nothing to worry about,' and be done with it? That's enough here?"

"Well, strictly speaking," replied Hakaril, "whoever bothers to take down that note is going to be greeted by an enormous and flashy but harmless fireworks display that will spell out 'seriously, it's me' by the time it's finished. Also, the parchment itself will become a dozen red roses. That distinctive enough for you?"

"In any case," he continued, "as I said, I'm off to the castle. And no, you're not going to be returned to your cell. I'll see to that, assuming your brother doesn't."